Vahl Piano Studio // Passion, Excellence, Artistry

I'm hoping to blog occasionally while at the MTNA Convention about my personal experiences this week, sessions I attended for the benefit of my students. This will be a more permanent record for me and will help focus my thoughts. 

Today I attended the excellent keynote address by Dr. Bill Moore, on the subject of his book by the same name, "Playing Your Best When It Counts." From his website for the book, playingyourbest.com comes the following:

Dr. Moore is a performance psychology consultant working with athletes, musicians, performing artists, and business professional helping both individuals and groups perform at optimal levels when it counts. He is president of Moore Performance Consulting and has worked with the worlds finest performers and organizations in the United States and in Europe. Dr. Moore is a popular and dynamic speaker at international and national conferences and has written books in performance psychology for athletes, coaches, and musicians. He has offered leadership development, team building and one-on-one coaching to numerous Fortune 500 executives and companies. Dr. Moore’s unique blend of experiences as a professional tennis player, intercollegiate coach, and performance psychology specialist has help to develop his reputation as a leading authority in his field. Dr. Moore lives in Norman, Oklahoma with his wife, Dr. Nicki Moore, Senior Associate Athletics Director for the University of Oklahoma Athletics Department, and has four sons; Brennan, Tyler and Cullen and Ian.''

 

Dr. Moore started by asking the question: How would you describe your best performance?

When I’m at my best I am like a . . .  What would you fill in the blank? In trying to form an image of something tangible, I said a swan - serene, beautiful, graceful, floating.

Some very important points of emphasis - 

The mental part of performance is the least developed.

Athletes are players who practice. Musicians are practicers who play.

Athletes have dozens of performance opportunities. Musicians have fewer opportunities.

The mental skills needed to put it in >>> are not the same as the ones needed to get it out.

We’ve got repetition, block practice, other kinds of practice, and now we’re ready to perform – I put it in there, why isn’t it coming out?

PRACTICE MINDSET Any one of these 3 will kill you in performance.

Self-instruction

Self-monitoring

Analyzing cause and effect

PERFORMANCE MINDSET (Is not a personality trait.)

Courage

Trust

Acceptance

PERSONALITY TRAITS:

1. Perfectionists are great Practicers, they have that mindset down perfectly

2. Artist – Accepts mistakes, no big deal. If you’re awesomely talented this is no problem. Just lets it come, doesn’t practice, plays “off the cuff” -

3. Performer - good practicers, but in performance they let it go. Ultimately what we want to do is let go of conscious control over correctness and attend to the higher order aspects of performance.

Self I processes one thing at a time  Self II processes multiple things at the same time

Bottom line and inner battle in human performance – Self I does not want to trust Self II, especially if the outcome matters. When great performers stop trusting, they stop being great.

4. Under-achiever

Imagine if you were to describe, step by step, how you get out of the car? Self I would get involved in the execution and just mess it up. How do we put Self I in a proper place so it benefits, but is out of the way?

TRUST is the performance goal. If you can get to trust yourself 85%, you can get to 85% consistently.

We should not seek to avoid discomfort. Our performance goal should be to manage discomfort. It takes Courage to manage that effectively.

Performance Script is a sensory rich description of playing great. For instance, descirbe the perfect warm up and beginning of a performance:

“I walk on stage, face the audience with a bow and a warm smile. I sit on the bench and center myself, thinking about the choreography of the first note. I sink into the key and as I go on in the piece, I know my warmth and sensitivity is coming through.” Rehearse this script 20-25 during the week before the performance.

Trusting what you’ve got is a courageous act.

ACCEPTANCE – A non-judgemental mindset. Judgements narrow our focus and capture our attention.

Expands your attentional capabilities. How do we work on acceptance?

Giving Self I Attentional Targets. A plan to put your focus on specific things.

PERFORMANCE PHASES:

1. Approach

2. Execution

3. Response

You can learn to be better at acceptance through

an 80-20 plan

performance scripts

targeting your attention

journaling

Be more solution-focused than problem centered.  www.PlayingYourBest.com